Tiny probes could sail to outer planets with the help of low-power
lasers
Date:
February 23, 2022
Source:
American Chemical Society
Summary:
Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New
Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to
Proxima Centauri b, the closest habitable planet to Earth, would
require thousands of years with even the biggest rockets. Now,
researchers calculate that low-power lasers on Earth could launch
and maneuver small probes equipped with silicon or boron nitride
sails, propelling them to much faster speeds than rocket engines.
FULL STORY ========================================================================== Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe
took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b,
the closest habitable planet to Earth, would require thousands of years
with even the biggest rockets. Now, researchers calculate in ACS' Nano Lettersthat low-power lasers on Earth could launch and maneuver small
probes equipped with silicon or boron nitride sails, propelling them to
much faster speeds than rocket engines.
========================================================================== Instead of catching wind, like the sails on boats, "laser sails" would
catch laser beams and could, in principle, push spacecraft to nearly
the speed of light. Scientists have been working on this concept for a
while. For example, one privately funded project called the Breakthrough Starshot initiative aims to send a small, sailed probe weighing about a
gram to Proxima Centauri b with a flight taking only 20 years. It would
be propelled to 20% of light speed by a 100 GW, kilometer-square laser
array. Ho-Ting Tung and Artur Davoyan wondered if much lower-power,
smaller laser arrays could find use in applications where conventional
electric and chemical rockets are now used. The lasers might someday be
able to adjust the orbit of satellites after launch or propel tiny sailed probes on interplanetary or interstellar missions, without requiring
large amounts of fuel.
The researchers performed calculations to show that even lasers with
powers of about 100 kW and array sizes of about a meter could power a
1-gram probe at velocities far exceeding the current record, with only
minutes to hours of laser illumination. According to their calculations,
the lasers could maneuver small probes between different Earth orbits in
only a day, which is not possible with current electrical and chemical
rockets. The team determined that the best materials for the laser sails,
which allowed high reflectivity and rapid cooling, were silicon nitride
and boron nitride structured at the nanoscale.
Finally, the researchers calculated that these tiny laser-propelled probes could travel fast enough to escape the solar system, reaching 5 times
higher velocities than the New Horizons probe. These prototype sailed spacecraft, driven by low-power lasers, could pave the wave for fast
space exploration and future interstellar flight, the researchers say.
The authors acknowledge funding from NASA, the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research, UCLA and the Hellman Society of Fellows.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by American_Chemical_Society. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Ho-Ting Tung, Artur R. Davoyan. Low-Power Laser Sailing for
Fast-Transit
Space Flight. Nano Letters, 2022; 22 (3): 1108 DOI: 10.1021/
acs.nanolett.1c04188 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220223085447.htm
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